Bend over . . . again

NEW YORK, May 23, 2005 - Troubled United Airlines ended its traditional pension plans dramatically earlier this month, abandoning them in a highly publicized move to the federal government's pension insurance agency. But many other traditional plans die quietly, either converted to "hybrid" plans or frozen and replaced with worker-funded 401(k) plans.

And it's happening with increasing frequency.

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Here comes another bailout of big business.

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The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., which insures private sector pensions, says the number of covered plans has dropped from a high of 112,208 in 1985 to fewer than 30,000 today. Of those remaining, some 20 percent are hybrid designs such as cash balance plans under which companies allocate pay and interest credits to accounts in each employee's name.

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There's a statistic from the Pension Benefit Guaranty Fund that private pensions already $450 billion in the red and will go higher as more companies default on their plans. 20 of the major Fortune 500 companies have not paid into their own plans for a couple years now as it is and 39% of plans are underfunded.

A note: Defaulted pensions picked up by the PBGF are generally worth a third of what they originally were.

Once again, everything big business touches manages to go to shit. To wit: The savings and loan industry, the airline industry, the prescription drug industry, and the energy industry. Oh, did I forget to mention these folks (and their lobbying PACs) are the Repubs biggest campaign contributors?

Now, do you think upper management is taking any wage or benefit cuts? Do you think they feel this kind of stress?

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"I calculated that under the cash balance plan, I would have to work until 78 to get the same annuity (monthly benefit) I would have had at age 65 under the old plan," Krueger said.

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How, at 65, do you deal with suddenly having to work another 13 years? Do you think this poor woman will have any kind of retirement? Odds are, she'll die working for the man just to scrape out some sort of existence. It's criminal.

My dad was a crusty old Brit, but he gave me a few pearls of wisdom that have proven true over the years. Most of it had to do with relating to women, but he always said that if you want to live like a human being when you retire, don't depend on anyone.

Nobody cares if you can afford to live but you. I never expected to get a pension or Social Security, but there's a lot of folks in their '60s and '70s who are living on a combination of company pensions and SSI. What does that do to them when their income is suddenly cut by two-thirds? What are they gonna do when the Chimp fucks up what's left of their SSI?

It's time for a change in the way we think in this country. We've become too much a 'disposable society'. Instead of revering our old folks and learning from them, we just treat them like chattel, to be tossed away when they're no longer useful. Sort of what they're doing to our troops.